


two once more from one

by MadHattie



Series: regenesis [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: BIG OL SPOILERS, Gen, in b4 all of this gets jossed by the next episode, mentions of lup, twin feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-17 22:10:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10603272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadHattie/pseuds/MadHattie
Summary: He doesn't know if this will work, but it will be worth it if he gets his sister back





	

When Taako pried open the door to the back room of the Fantasy Costco, his first thought was that the room had more dust than was reasonable for a place that had only been abandoned for a couple of weeks. Or maybe it had always been like that, and he had just been too distracted before to notice it. The dust sat in a thin film on top of the small desk and the empty shelves. It tumbled and skittered in little dust bunny clumps beneath a table. What caught his eye most was how it floated in front of the huge green pod at the back of the room, suspended in the pale light like thousands of tiny insects. Taako walked towards that light as if entranced, his mind consumed by a wonderful, terrible idea.

He chewed at his lip, considering and reconsidering. He wasn’t a geneticist by any means, not even a biologist. The research that he had done for IPRE had been mostly related to planes and dimensions, and later, once they reached this plane, to transmutation magic. Still, there were some things that he had picked up; facts that he had memorized to try to impress people, or that he had pried out of Merle, who was the only IPRE member with a background in biology. Taako knew that he and Lup were identical, and that identical twins were almost 100% genetically similar. The two of them had started as a single cell and then split apart, forming two separate people from the same genetic code. 

But they were never exactly the same, and that’s what made him hesitate. When they were really little their differences were things that you had to look close for: Taako’s nose is slightly larger, Lup has a freckle on her top lip. Then Lup knocked out her two front teeth and Taako learned how to braid his own hair while Lup left hers loose. The biggest change was during puberty when Lup started to transition and Taako started to put on some chub from taste-testing his own creations. But even at their most distinct, they were still undoubtedly twins, easily mistaken for each other if one didn’t look closely.

They were two, made from one, but he had no way of knowing if the body that he could grow in this strange egg of a machine could be hers, or if it would just another him, useless without a soul to inhabit it. If he made Lup a body like that, would she even want it? She had done so much to make her own body hers: years of hormones and surgery and spells shaping it to how it should be. In a body like his it would be like when they were kids again, when Lup would sob and dig her nails into the skin of her arms so hard that they would bleed. He didn’t want to put her through that, but he wanted her back, desperately, irrationally. He wanted to see his sister again. 

In a move more characteristic of Magnus, Taako upended the contents of his bag on the dirty tile floor. He leaned the umbrella,  _ her  _ umbrella, up against a table, and started to rummage through his junk. Immovable rod? Useless. The duck-shaped whetstone Killian gave him for Candlenights?  _ Super  _ useless. Eventually he found what he was looking for: a small dagger that he had used more for peeling potatoes than for protection. He unsheathed it and wiped it on his cloak a couple of times in case there was anything on it. Then he pressed the blade to his finger, cursing his hands as they shook,  _ you’ve done this tons of times accidentally, you know it’s not that bad. Hell, you’ve almost died multiple times, calm the fuck down about this tiny little cut. _ The blood welled up bright red, redder than the cloak Lup had been wearing the last time he saw her, both alive and dead. Without giving himself time to reconsider, Taako pressed his bloody finger into the pod.

The material was thick and gelatinous, like sticking his hand in a bowl full of jello. He left his hand in for a minute, watching as the blood spread out in all directions like a spider’s web. When he finally pulled it out, the material rushed to fill the space he had left, leaving the surface smooth and unbroken.

Taako took a step back and took in the pod. It was… fairly disappointing to be honest. There were no flashing lights or rapid transformations, just a few drops of blood suspended in a thick green goo. Was there a spell that he had to do? Barry would probably know, but he would ask too many questions and get emotional about the whole thing. Maybe it would be best if he just left it to do its thing. If that didn’t work, then he would take it as a sign that this all wasn’t meant to be. 

Slowly, he began to gather his things from off the floor. He grabbed the immovable rod from where it had rolled behind a table, and kicked at the salt that had come out of the low-sodium salt shaker so that it wasn’t all in one pile. When he had shoved everything back into his bag as best he could, he reached to grab the umbrastaff from its resting place. His fingers grazed the wood of the handle, worn smooth after so many years of use, but he couldn’t bring himself to grab it. The umbrastaff had always been Lup’s, he had just been borrowing it. But the battle was over. He didn’t need it anymore. 

Taako shouldered his bag and headed to the door. He tried not to look back.

  
The door closed, and there was a moment of stillness before the umbrastaff clattered to the floor. It opened and closed rapidly, inching its way through the dust until it lay in front of the pod. Once it was there it flipped itself inside out, popping up so that it was leaning against the pod. It wobbled a bit until it was stable, then closed itself up and went dormant, as if waiting for someone to come pick it up again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my twin sister Nicole for editing this :)  
> UPDATE: holy shit most of this was speculation but a lot of it ended up being canon?? anyway I love Lup


End file.
